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Tip

Making them with kids?

If you’re making
the slice for kids, you can swap the dark
chocolate for milk, leave the salt out of the
caramel and the nuts out of the base.

Tip

Jane says...

It must be 20
years since we
last made these
together, but the
memory of standing in the
kitchen stirring caramel with
mum is still as vivid as ever.
She knows I can’t resist
fiddling with a recipe, so
now these shortbread slices
have grown up too, and are
made with creamy salted
caramel, toasted almonds
and a layer of dark, bitter
chocolate

Method

Heat oven to 160C/fan 140C/gas 3 and lightly butter a 20 x 23 cm shallow baking tin. Sift the flours together, then stir in the sugar, almonds and a pinch of salt. Rub in the butter and vanilla seeds to make fine crumbs, then tip into the tin and press down with the back of a spoon. Put in the freezer for 5 mins, then bake for 35-40 mins. Cool.

For the caramel, put the sugar and 100ml water in a heavy-based pan, heat gently until the sugar dissolves, then turn up the heat until it turns dark amber. Stir in the cream in four additions until smooth and shiny – take
care as it will bubble up. Stir in the butter and ½ tsp salt. Pour over the shortbread and cool.

For the topping, melt the chocolate and butter over a pan of simmering water, then pour over the caramel and smooth out with the back of a spoon. Chill until firm, at least 30 mins. Cut into quarters, then 16 pieces. Will keep in the fridge for up to 3 days.

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Comments, questions and tips

Comments

The key to most recipes is to follow the instructions. The caramel "works" just fine but it requires time. You must let the sugar and water cook until it becomes deep amber. If not, it won't be possible for the caramel to set. Once it becomes deep amber, add the cream in 4 parts as the recipe says and stir to combine. Then add the butter and stir again. It sets almost immediately upon being poured over the shortbread.
Having said that, it's not a great recipe for caramel because it tastes a bit watery. It would be better, perhaps, to dissolve the sugar in whole milk and proceed as with an old fashioned dulce de leche recipe. But... in reply to comments below, the recipe as written -- if followed -- does produce a caramel which sets over the shortbread.

I made this yesterday (I only used the caramel recipe) and I was really pleased with the result. I hadn't made caramel before and it turned out really well. Along with the be-ro petticoat tails recipe for the base and cadburys milk chocolate to pour on the top it was very successful.
(I didn't have any single cream and used double cream instead. I'm not sure if single cream would have altered it a lot but double cream seemed to work fine.)

We tried these for the first time yesterday and they are amazing. After a few failed attempts with a recipe from Waitrose, we'd almost lost hope of being able to make a good caramel slice, but this recipe was so easy and worked really well. It's important to remember not to stir the caramel once the sugar has dissolved, or it will crystalise though. That said, don't worry if there is some crystalisation when you add the cream - just keep stirring it over the heat and they'll dissolve away.

Really delicious treat, we saw the comments about the caramel not being so good so we left it on heat a few minutes longer and it worked out fine. A definite try if you're feeling like a yummy snack, but does take a while.

If you've got a very sweet tooth then these are for you! To make the caramel I put all 3 ingredients in a pan together, dissolved the sugar slowly over a low heat and then boiled hard til soft ball stage (only took about 5 mins - used a thermometer but also used the cold water method to doublecheck it would set). In the end I wasn't particularly happy with the shortbread - a bit too crumbly, but overall they tasted very good.

in Europe you can buy tins of nestle condensed milk that they have turned into caramel (like dulche de leche), I used that instead of the caramel recipe, was so quick and easy and tasted great, v rich though!

Hi all,
I have made a similar recipe to this and it is homemade, and it is a lovely toffee sauce and sets really well, however you do have to leave it for an hour.
The ingredient are; 7oz condensed milk, 4oz lurpax butter unsalted, 2oz of Billington's muscovado sugar and 2oz golden syrap.
Method:
1/ Melt the butter, sugar and syrap on low heat in a saucepan. Once it has melted add the condensed milk.
2/ Once the mixture has come together and starts to bubbly, time 7 minutes. However you can't leave it as it will stick.
3/ Put over your cooled shortbread, and the longer you leave it the better give a minimum of an hour.
4/ From this when the toffee has set, melt some chocolate and put it over it.
Vola Enjoy.
Any questions or queries, do not hesitate to email me.
Alicia
Xxx

Can anyone help? Tried making millionaires shortbread, the base and chocolate topping was fine but the caramel did not set and I had to throw the whole lot in the bin. The recipe I followed for the caramel was 5 oz brown soft sugar, 5 oz butter and 397g tin of carnation condensed milk. Melted all the above ingreadients over a low heat, stirring continuously until bubbles appear then remove. The mixture was then poured over the biscuit base and put in the fridge to set but it never setted. Does anyone have a recipe for caramel that sets??

Perhaps some of you have spotted this but I thought it might be worth saying that there is a similar recipe in the october 2007 edition on P112. It is for chocolate and hazelnut caramel bars and is utterly fab!
I was actually looking for somewhere on the website to rate it when I came across all the caramel capers here.
In case you don't have the magazine in question you need 125g butter, 1x397g tin condensed milk, 2tbsp golden syrup and 75g caster sugar. Just melt the butter add the other ingredients on a low heat and stir continuously for 15 minutes or so. Job done!
Good luck everyone!

I also made a batch of these despite poor reviews and was determined to get the caramel right. Unfortunately I had the opposite problem on my first attempt. I heated it for too long and the caramel was more like tablet and didn't pour very well at all. It tasted good though but still not what I envisaged. Having enough ingredients, I made a second batch but this time, I did the cold water test and waited for the sugar to reach the soft ball stage, about 30 minutes. This time, it poured beautifully and set within minutes. However, the colour was no where near the same as the one in the picture . In fact the caramel was lighter than the shortbread! I agree that the instructions on making the caramel needs to be a bit more specific particularly with the timing. Someone mentioned using Dulce de Leche. I tried this before but it was difficult to cut the slices cleanly and is very sticky and messy to eat.

I made this despite the bad reviews hoping that taking heed of peoples suggestions here would mean a better result. No such luck. Agreed that the chocolate and the shortbread worked fine and are tasty, the caramel however doesn't really qualify as caramel. More sticky sugar paste. I tried cooking longer as suggested but to no avail. Not awful, but a can of dulce de leche would have worked much better.

I didn't like this recipe. The caramel was far too sweet & didn't set properly although i have to admit that maybe that was because I didn't boil the sugar & water for long enough as my caramel was much paler than the picture. Very disappointing.

I loved it although it is rather sweet. As for the caramel I made one batch and thought it looked really too pale to set so having enough ingredients I made another batch of caramel and cooked it longer and reading the recipe again, it said the caramel would bubble up when the cream was added and mine didn't the first time, so on the second attempt I added a small amount first to see if it bubbled up which it did and was fine. Also now and again I took it off the heat as I felt I couldn't see if the colour had gone to amber when it was bubbling up.

The shortbread and the chocolate were fine but the caramel was too runny, although not unpleasantly so. Mine was much paler than the picture above. All in all, a bit too sweet for me but my son loved it.

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